


Respite

by Frellywellies



Category: Mercy Street (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-10
Updated: 2016-02-10
Packaged: 2018-05-19 12:21:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,573
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5967259
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Frellywellies/pseuds/Frellywellies
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“There was a family,” Mary murmured sleepily, “from—”</p>
<p>“Yes, yes, from Little Bumbleshoot or East Nowhere, I understand. Mary, you must realize by now that there is always a family.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	Respite

“This has become ridiculous,” Dr. Foster said, exasperated at finding Mary, once again, folded up on the floor between two hospital beds, attempting to make herself as small as possible.

“There was a family,” Mary murmured sleepily, “from—”

“Yes, yes, from Little Bumbleshoot or East Nowhere, I understand. Mary, you must realize by now that there is always a family.”

“It’s just one night,” she tried to adjust her head on the pillow she had made from her own balled-up apron, but apparently there was no good angle at which to rest her head.

“It is not. It is not even the only night this week,” Dr. Foster insisted. He stretched out a hand to her, making it very clear that he was not moving until she got up. With a sigh, Mary submitted, taking his hand and rising to her feet.

“I cannot allow you to let me take your room,” Mary protested as he ushered her up the stairs.

Foster gave her a wry look. “I had no such intentions. Doctors require sleep as well, you know.”

Mary paused before the door to his room. “So you are offering to…”

He looked steadily at her, utterly innocent, as though he could not imagine any unsavory implications to this situation. “Share my room with a colleague in need? Yes. Exactly that.” She imagined, though, that were he to find Dr. Hale in such a predicament, he may be slightly less eager to open his own accommodations.

This sort of arrangement wasn’t unheard of. Mary had bunked many a night with the Sisters, with Matron Brannan; she’d even spent one excruciatingly uncomfortable evening with Miss Hastings. Who, of course, habitually shared her room (and more) with Dr. Hale, a state of affairs that everyone in the hospital delicately pretended not to notice.

And yet…

Dr. Foster swung the door open. “Make your decision quickly, Miss Phinney. The morning approaches.”

He had been correct when he said that it wasn’t her first night on the floor this week and Mary had to admit that she did not relish another night of twitching away from rats and listening to the moans and ravings of the boys in their beds.

And it wasn’t as though tongues weren’t already wagging over the two of them. Ever since she had helped him through his bout with “smallpox,” they had developed such an easy rapport, a fine working partnership that benefitted each of them so splendidly that Dr. Foster now almost exclusively sought her out whenever he required assistance. Mary did the same whenever she wanted a doctor’s expertise. 

This habit had the unintended effect of cementing the two of them as a pair in the minds of the staff. So much so that, should the matron or Summers or one of the orderlies come upon Mary or Dr. Foster going about their business singly, they were apt to immediately ask where the other was. Mary was not naive about such things, she knew that many around them already imagined that the two had a more than professional connection. Miss Hastings, for example, would certainly have something nasty to say, should she discover this rooming situation.

Of course, Miss Hastings was very gifted at finding nasty things to say no matter the circumstances.

“Very well,” she said, sweeping into the room with all the confidence she could muster.

Once inside, Foster repaired to his desk, where he had left a candle and an open notebook. It did not surprise her that he was a somewhat brusque and disinterested host. “I’m not quite finished with some notes,” he said, “pardon the light.”

Mary paused just inside the door, taking in the familiar wardrobe, a small pile of books inexplicably stacked before it and the doctor’s discarded jacket lying rumpled on a chair. And, of course, the bed, which had been made and partially unmade again, as though Dr. Foster had been preparing to lie down. She realized that she had failed to consider the…precise details of the their sleeping arrangements and she stood frozen now, pondering this new wrinkle.

She started to pull the small chair over to her when Foster snorted. “Oh, just take the bed, Mary. This would be an exceptionally poor time to make your bid for martyrdom.” He looked over his shoulder at her and she saw the glint in his eyes that meant he was teasing her.

Even just a few weeks before, she might have been bemused or even injured by his needling but she saw clearly now that it was the most reliable way he had of demonstrating fondness. His manner was so unlike anyone else’s, she felt she was perpetually interpreting him, the way a fortune teller might extract the future from tea leaves.

She found her hands moving nearly of their own volition, folding up her apron and leaving it, a neat square of fabric, on the chair next to Dr. Foster’s jacket. The sight of the two things in proximity to one another had an odd effect on her, a wave of such tenderness that she didn’t entirely know what to do. It had been a long time since she had gotten this close to some manner of domesticity. Apparently she had missed it.

She was not so moved, however, that she had forgotten the realities of the situation: Dr. Foster was not her husband and she was most certainly not his wife. There were proprieties to be observed.

Specifically, she now confronted the question of what she should wear—or not wear—as sleeping clothes. When she roomed with the other ladies, or slept in her own bed, it was her custom to sleep in a chemise and her pantalets. When she was forced to sleep on the floor, she naturally kept all of her clothing intact. Not only was it more modest, it was considerably warmer as well. Such extremes should not be necessary here but, at the same time, she did not wish to make an…implication.

She glanced over at Dr. Foster who seemed wholly absorbed in some notes he was taking. He must have sensed her gaze, however, because he looked up at her. “Does the light disturb you? I can snuff it.”

“No,” Mary said quickly. “I’m merely tired. Moving slowly.” In actuality, she was remarkably alert now. Her half-sleep on the ward floor seemed like something that had happened to another woman entirely.

After some consideration, Mary decided upon a modified approach. She removed her outer jacket and reached under the band of her skirt to unfasten the string on one of her underskirts, leaving the others (as well as her bodice, of course) intact. She had hardly made herself indecent and Dr. Foster never even looked up as she peeled away her layers but she nevertheless had a gnawing sense of transgression about the act. When she was done, she nearly dove into the bed, drawing up the blankets almost entirely over her head in her haste.

“Thank you,” she said, rolling to face the wall.

“You’re very welcome, Mary.” His voice was distant, distracted. He was a thousand miles away and apparently had no sense of the minor moral crisis she had just navigated. Mary felt a blush, red and urgent, rising in her cheeks. She was so very grateful for the dimness of the room and the protection of the blankets.

In those first moments, lying there stiff as iron and acutely aware that she was tucked fast into a married man’s bed, Mary could not imagine how she would ever sleep. The exertions of the day and the week, however, had drawn more strength from her than she realized and she quickly drifted off into darkness, with just the soft scratching of Dr. Foster’s pen in her ears.

She awoke some uncountable hours later, the room now truly dark. She had not noticed when Foster blew out the light, nor felt it when he slipped into the bed alongside her. But he was here now and it was his voice that had woken her.

It should have registered as a terrible shock, an imposition that she must defend against. Instead, it was oddly soothing and, indeed, very natural. A shape beside her in the shadows, an anchor on the opposite side of the bed; the slow, regular breathing of another; she felt no urge to flee from these things.

“Mary,” he had said, voice dull with sleep, and Mary presumed that she had been thrashing again. Whenever she fell asleep, she rolled and flopped and twisted wildly, as though there were a secret core of restlessness in her that emerged only when her conscious mind was dormant. Her husband had forever been complaining about it. Until the end, of course, when their marital bed had become his sick bed and he occupied it alone.

Mary prepared to rise from the bed and take up a position in the chair, which had been her first instinct after all. But that was not why the doctor had woken her.

“Here,” he said, taking her into his arms until she settled against the planes and contours of his body. He held her firmly but not uncomfortably, one arm around waist, the other underneath her shoulders. She could feel the rasp of his beard on the back of her neck.“Be still,” he murmured.

And, to her very great surprise, she was.


End file.
